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Godly Game or Godless Satire? Countering Biblical Ignorance with Heretical Humor

By Betsy Shirley

…the Old Testament because they’re long and boring…” Here pauses. “Granted, Numbers is like…” “I like Numbers, but anyway…” mumbles Caleb. “The real impetus for the game,” Thomas resumes, “is to get people to engage in Scripture and read stories they’ve never read before. When a concubine is cut up into twelve pieces, that imagery is really offensive. But a lot of people didn’t even know that story existed in the Bible.” I suspect they’re right; re…

Mormons Prepare to March in LGBT Pride Parades Nationwide

By Joanna Brooks

…en taught my whole life?” For example, my eighteen-year-old son received a phone call from the bishop for an interview to set him on the road to preparing for his missionary service. So we are in the hall, and I’m telling him, “You need to call the bishop.” My son looks at me and says, “Mom, I can’t do this.” We talked over many things he was concerned about. One of them was that he has an openly gay teacher who, he told me, “is one of the most sp…

Christian Right Claims to be ‘Above Politics’ Are Unbelievable

By Chrissy Stroop

…iately confirm is patently false. Hell, even here, in and around “secular” Portland, Oregon, I’m regularly bombarded with obnoxious billboard evangelism. Yet Hubbard still states, presumably without irony, “We’re trying to put Jesus out there so that people can see his name,” as if seeing Jesus’s name is not an everyday occurrence for, well, every American who doesn’t live under a rock. This disconnect from reality would seem to belie an insecurit…

Mark O. Hatfield and the Politics of an Earlier Era

By David R. Swartz

…int in Hatfield’s eyes betrayed his glee at the subversive act. Hatfield’s Oregon constituents also approved of his fierce independence. Evangelical pietists from rural districts liked stories of their governor suddenly stopping his state vehicle to pray. Campus radicals in Portland called him the “grooviest senator in the nation.” “One Sunday he will give us as liberal a speech as you will want and the next Sunday will come out with fundamentalis…

Russian Politician Wants to Ban Apple CEO Who Says Being Gay is God’s Gift; Violence After Preachers Blame Liberian Gays for Ebola; Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…eart.] And in January, the Gay Christian Network will host a conference in Portland, Oregon that they claim takes more of a “third way” by welcoming perspectives of affirming Christians and those who believe faithfulness requires celibacy for LGBT persons. Catholic Church: Discussion of Gays, Family, Continues Post-Synod A few days after the end synod on the family, Pope Francis was back in the news with comments about the family. The context was…

Billy Graham, Most Famous Religious Figure of 20th C, Dies at 99

By Randall Balmer

…m any serious accusation of wrongdoing. During the course of his Portland, Oregon, crusade in 1950, Graham made several decisions that would affect the course of his career and shape the revival enterprise. First, at the urging of several supporters from the world of business, he decided to incorporate his revival apparatus as the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association, thereby adopting a business model of organization and efficiency. After initial…

The Kids are Religious Right: Punk Rock & Pro-Life

By Justin Philpot

…s founded in 1993 and was originally headquartered in a rented basement in Portland, Oregon. Spurred to form the group in light of what he saw as a rash of pro-choice events in the early 1990s, Kemper was particularly interested in the relationship between pro-choice groups, musicians, and the media. His specific motivation was the creation of Rock for Choice, a project of the Feminist Majority Foundation. Begun as a way to raise money to support…

Republican Scandals Drag Secretive ‘Family’ Into the Big Time

By Randall Balmer, Anthea Butler, Evan Derkacz, Jeff Sharlet, and Diane Winston

…mpire, for many reasons, but especially with a president with low approval numbers, a failing war, and a decrepit infrastructure. Organizations like The Family and fundamentalist Christians, however, see an “Empire of Christ” at the core of any definition of “empire.” Their earnest, methodical recasting of the narrative of American history has been envisioned through the lens of Godly founding fathers, one nation under God, and the like (see Jeff’…

Snake-Handlers, False Messiahs, and a Few Great Souls: 14 Who Died in 2014

By Daniel Silliman

No other end-of-year list can hope to offer such profound juxtapositions: a groundbreaking female Mennonite pastor alongside an “immortalist”; the transcendent wisdom of a civil rights leader alongside one of the most hate-filled religious figures in contemporary memory. But here it is, a connect-the-dots portrait of a powerfully complicated American religious landscape, circa 2014. Vincent Gordon Harding Historian and theologian Vincent Gordon H…

‘Anti-Romeo’ Vigilante Squads Target Men Suspected Of Being Gay; More in the Global LGBT Recap

By Peter Montgomery

…married in first month; Lutheran priests barred from officiating More than 800 same-sex couples were married in March after marriage equality went into effect on the first of the month; 770 had already been in civil partnerships. The Lutheran Evangelical Church has decreed that priests are not permitted to marry same-sex couples and some bishops warned that those who do would face “consequences.” From a March 1 story: In spite of the church rulin…